A Simple Object that Spans the Whole Consensus Hierarchy

Mostéfaoui, Achour; Perrin, Matthieu; Raynal, Michel

doi:10.1142/s0129626418500068

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…If the number of ℓ-buffer-write instructions previously applied to the memory location is ℓ ′ < ℓ, then the first ℓ − ℓ ′ elements of this sequence are ⊥. Subsequent of the conference version of this paper [EGSZ16], Mostéfaoui, Perrin, and Raynal [MPR18] defined a k-sliding window register, which is an object that supports only k-buffer-read and k-buffer-write instructions.…”

Section: Buffersmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Complexity-Based Hierarchy for Multiprocessor Synchronization

Ellen

Gelashvili

Shavit

et al. 2016

Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing

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For many years, Herlihy's elegant computability-based Consensus Hierarchy has been our best explanation of the relative power of various types of multiprocessor synchronization objects when used in deterministic algorithms. However, key to this hierarchy is treating synchronization instructions as distinct objects, an approach that is far from the real-world, where multiprocessor programs apply synchronization instructions to collections of arbitrary memory locations. We were surprised to realize that, when considering instructions applied to memory locations, the computability based hierarchy collapses. This leaves open the question of how to better capture the power of various synchronization instructions.In this paper, we provide an approach to answering this question. We present a hierarchy of synchronization instructions, classified by the space complexity necessary to solve consensus in an obstructionfree manner using these instructions. Our hierarchy provides a classification of combinations of known instructions that seems to fit with our intuition of how useful some are in practice, while questioning the effectiveness of others. In particular, we prove an essentially tight characterization of the power of buffered read and write instructions. Interestingly, we show a similar result for multi-location atomic assignments.

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Section: Buffersmentioning

confidence: 99%